Electronic wireline simulators have been developed to allow testing of wireline transmission equipment without having to resort to a “cable farm”, i.e. a large collection of different types and lengths of cable over which the transmission capabilities can be tested. The known wireline simulators synthesize a circuit presenting a certain attenuation and phase distortion to the signals applied to it. In this way, a known wireline simulator adequately simulates a single piece of cable, the simulated length and type of which may be varied within a predetermined range. The known wireline simulators do not allow the simulation of crosstalk between multiple lines.
Modern digital subscriber line equipment, in particular ADSL and VDSL equipment, has the capability to perform “vectoring”, i.e. to coordinate the signals transmitted on different lines using a crosstalk canceller, in such a way that the crosstalk between the different lines is substantially cancelled out by the signal components added to each original signal by the crosstalk canceller. To adequately and efficiently test a system comprising a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) with vectoring capabilities, it is desired to have the equivalent of a wireline simulator, with the ability to simulate multiple mutually coupled lines.